Speaking after the Browns' preseason finale, Thomas said the club must regroup after losing its best player for the second time in two years to a violation of the substance-abuse policy. Gordon served a two-game ban in 2013 for testing positive for codeine only to lead the NFL in the receiving yards.

The left tackle reserved his most pointed comments the collectively-bargained policy governing marijuana. He said the fault lies with both sides, the league and union.

"I think looking at the NFL drug program, I think they haven't really touched it in a lot of years because it's kinda been the one thing when you're collectively bargaining that it kinda gets put to the end and then when you're close on a deal you just say 'ahh let's just leave it how it's been' rather than actually work on maybe some issues that are there," Thomas said.

"The problem is that now you're sitting in a situation where you have a collective bargaining agreement that lasts 10 years and in the middle of it nobody's going to want to go back to the bargaining table and try to hash out things that may be an issue as they clearly are on a number of different levels but that are only going to affect a couple of people, I think there's a resistance from management of the NFL and also from the players association to do that type of needed updating of the drug policy because obviously there's some oversights when they wrote the program and some cultural changes that have happened that I don't think the program accurately reflects the morals of society today and the NFL and pro sports in general."

Thomas noted the threshold for a positive marijuana test is 10 times higher for Olympic athletes than NFL players. Some pro leagues do not penalize their players for failed marijuana screenings.

"There's obviously a lot of things that they did when they first put it together that were in good faith and they thought were good, but just like any law a lot of times you have to go back and revisit things that need tweaking," Thomas said.

He said it's "unfortunate" to lose Gordon and Arizona Cardinals linebacker Daryl Washington -- two of the league's better players -- to season-long bans for pot.

Goodell admitted he mishandled the Ray Rice case, giving the Baltimore Ravens running back just two games for allegedly assaulting his then fiancee.

"Obviously the commissioner got a lot of flack for what happened with Ray Rice and I think with the discipline policy he has carte blanche to do whatever he wants but with the drug policy that's collectively bargained," Thomas said. "Until him and (NFL Players Association executive director (DeMaurice) Smith actually want to get together and fix some of it, I think we're going to be stuck with an outdated policy."

Thomas supports a tougher stance on domestic violence.

"I guess I haven't really thought about it too much because I think it just came out today but certainly domestic violence is something that we don't want to see in society," he said. "It's something that deserves a harsh penalty."

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